Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Why Wait for a Climate Bill, General Electric Argues (GE)

What a hoot!
These guys are the same company we mentioned back in July 2007:

GE gets grant to install GE solar panels on GE headquarters

Energy Fund Pays General Electric To Buy GE

General Electric gets state grant to buy GE-made solar panels

The PR flack was quoted as saying:
“It’s a good demonstration project for the technology,” O’Toole said.
Asked why a large, profitable corporation like GE would need financial help from the state, O’Toole said one reason “is to show you have to invest in new technologies. Companies cannot do it alone.”
HartfordBusiness.com

In other GE news, spokesmen did not comment on whether PR spin could be harnessed as an inexhaustible and eternal source of power.
It seems the trick to this stuff is to get someone else to pay for it.
From the New York Times' Green Inc. blog:
Given the dicey odds for congressional approval of climate legislation, at least in the near term, a company that sells equipment for reducing carbon dioxide emissions is promoting a new strategy: federal money for tactical planning.

That company would be General Electric, which makes equipment to remove carbon dioxide from coal through a gasification process and store it underground, preventing it from entering the atmosphere. Coal is the most carbon-rich fuel in common use.

The technology is expensive and will remain that way until several commercial-scale projects have been built, said Monte Atwell, general manager of gasification at GE. But few emitters in the United States will deploy the capture equipment until there is a government mandate to do so or a charge for carbon dioxide emissions, the thinking goes. By that time, the world may be in a big hurry to slash carbon dioxide emissions, Mr. Atwell said in a meeting with reporters....MORE
Exactly the approach GE founder Thomas Edison took (not)